


Common Sparrow

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Crack, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, dust bathing, references to biblical events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:48:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I can’t imagine the locusts are done already.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“The locusts - we lifted the lid on that amphora two days ago.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Michael blinks and gives a grave nod. “I see. And the fire and brimstone…”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Turning to look across his shoulder, Gabriel looks across the deep blue expanse of sky, entirely cloudless. The only darkness in it is that of the smoke from the city itself, yet burning.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“All clear,” he declares.</i>
</p><p>Siblings taking a break from destroying worlds and following orders. Some crack, a lot of fluff, delicious smut, and something to help us recover from the ep on Thursday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Sparrow

Michael starts it.

Michael _always_ starts it.

Of course, Gabriel can’t tell that from afar. Sent on another task for their Father, this time to Egypt. Days of darkness, scourges of locusts, the usual unleashing of amphora to drive the heretics and idolaters to madness before the plague of blood begins.

At the moment, though, there is no sign of their blood-plague. There is only a billowing of dust, incongruous with the otherwise smooth sands, far beyond their tents.

With a sigh, a brief glance back at the wretched city, Gabriel unfurls his wings and takes to the air, silent once there to seek after his wayward brother amidst the dust cloud. Perhaps Uriel had come to interrupt them again, never content to sit and watch from afar. Perhaps Michael had come upon some people who were where they should not be, and started early.

Though that’s unlikely. Despite his preening delight at proclaiming his own given standing, he rarely makes the effort to go above and beyond - so to speak - the instructions given. Smite a city? Sure. But never its outskirts.

It’s inaccurate to say Michael is lazy, he is far from that. What he is, though, is stubborn.

And always - _always_ \- Gabriel’s problem.

Gabriel lands near enough to see, and far enough to avoid the dirt that skims against the ground, wings unfurled and shifting in irritation as he takes one step, another, and with a displeased swipe of his feathers, clears the air enough to see.

In a wingspan-sized basin of his own making crouches Michael, fingers set to the ground and wings splayed wide. He blinks at Gabriel. Gabriel blinks back. And he turns to look around them both to confirm what he already knows.

No celestial sister teasing their youngest brother.

No fleeing mortals seeking sanctuary.

Just Michael, who straightens slowly, as if by doing so Gabriel’s memory of finding him nestled into a sand dune might pass into time and be erased. With a remarkable sense of stoicism, Michael wipes his fingers down the drape of his skirt, to tidy away the dust that coats every other inch of hair and feather and armor and skin.

Michael coughs.

Gabriel blinks, and with a deep sigh brings a hand to his eyes to rub them.

“You are missed, brother,” he says after a moment to ground himself again. “In the city you are currently destroying. But by all means, Michael, take your time in the desert.”

“I’m -”

Gabriel’s brows raise high and he folds his arms. Michael tries to stifle another cough, but the jerk of his shoulders sends up little plumes of dust from his clothing, and once-black hair now made pale brown.

“You,” Gabriel coaxes, drawing out the word.

“I can’t imagine the locusts are done already.”

“The locusts - we lifted the lid on that amphora two days ago.”

Michael blinks and gives a grave nod. “I see. And the fire and brimstone…”

Turning to look across his shoulder, Gabriel looks across the deep blue expanse of sky, entirely cloudless. The only darkness in it is that of the smoke from the city itself, yet burning.

“All clear,” he declares, watching then instead the near-vibration of Michael’s wings. Trembling twitches, individual feathers spreading outward and relaxing again, over and over and each time unspooling dust from their barbs. “Is something the matter?”

“I was -”

“Yes, we’ve covered that.”

“Dustbathing.”

Gabriel opens his mouth to comment and realizes he genuinely has nothing to say to that. He closes his lips with a hum and ducks his head, glancing to the sand crater out of the corner of his eye as his brother brings up a hand to attempt to fluff away the dust from his hair. He has little more success than achieving a rather loud sneeze, and messing up the tunic he had attempted to clean first - that endeavor proving just as futile.

“Dustbathing,” he repeats at length, eyes up to confirm that his brother had actually claimed that excuse instead of -

“Michael, you are the tenth plague of this doomed city, you know this,” Gabriel reminds him, holding out a hand in a gesture of attempted understanding. “Books will hold a warning to all other races and times to not anger Father as this man has and you will be remembered for dustbathing through the carnage.”

“It’s not as if they’re going anywhere,” Michael protests. “What does it matter if I do it now or an hour from now -”

“Dustbathing.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“ _Dustbathing_ ,” Gabriel says again, each syllable its own word. “The Sword of God, His Gift, His Righteousness incarnate burying himself in the dust -”

“Have you tried it?”

The question hangs between them as Gabriel looks on his little brother in both wonder and dismay. “Have I -”

“You haven’t or else you’d understand,” Michael says, nearly prim about it, until he snorts derision at his brother. “I learned it from watching earthly birds, the little sparrows.”

“I’m concerned,” Gabriel interjects, “that this bears repeating - that you need the reminder at all. You are not a little sparrow, Michael, you’re an archangel.”

“Who needs to go and slaughter, I know, _Gabriel_. And I will as soon as I’m done. The feather-mites and little lice are miserable out here,” he complains, as another uncomfortable tug spreads his wings shivering wider. “I’ll meet you back at camp.”

Gabriel considers his brother again, a slow closing of his eyes before he opens them and lifts them to the sky. He wonders, some days, what their Father thinks of seeing moments like these, when His vicious and powerful weapons turn to the dust like common sparrows.

He wonders what their Father thinks of a lot of things, and if perhaps He doesn’t merely entertain himself with seeing what His children get up to unsupervised.

“The feather-mites and lice.”

“Yes.”

“The ones that I find ways to remove that doesn’t involve rolling around in the dirt.”

“This is more practical.”

“We are wheels of fire, Michael!”

“And we are told to save our strength in using it for such things as -”

“- smiting a city by Father’s word. Brother, see reason. You are needed. Remember what you are.”

Michael’s smile curves, suddenly, sharp as the blades he carries on his hips. Or would, anyway, had he not set those aside in favor of… this. Amusement narrows his eyes and he lets his folded arms drop loose.

“If your worry is that I won’t eradicate them entirely, you needn’t burden me with your neuroses,” he declares, turning to pad on sandaled feet back to his self-made basin.

“Do you mean the heretics, or the vermin?”

“Both. They’re one in the same, aren’t they?”

“And you, Archangel Michael, the Great Prince and Bringer of War, Right Hand of God,” laughs Gabriel, unable to restrain himself any longer. “You’re certainly choosing your battles wisely, let me tell you.”

Michael snorts and crouches again. With a distinct pleasure brightening his eyes, pale green, he spreads his wings wide and with a shudder drums them back against the sand. It bursts around him, filling the air with a whirlwind of dust and the clapping of wings beating furiously.

To his credit, he hardly seems bothered about the more pressing matter of the city falling to ruin in the distance. In fact, he seems entirely at peace, but for the blush of brotherly embarrassment reddening his cheeks.

Gabriel watches the way Michael closes his eyes and holds his breath as the dust presses up around him. He looks, truly, like the little sparrows he is emulating. Frumpy and dusty and a mess when he flaps his wings higher and upsets more dust over himself.

And all over Gabriel.

His own wings come up, not quick enough to keep the dust away but enough that when he looks up from beneath them, his displeasure is mixed equally with his amusement.

“Pick your battles, little brother, do not tease me.”

“I believe I already have,” Michael answers from his little cloud. He ruffles again, spilling sand across his skin and hair, armor and tunic, covering his wings so entirely that there’s hardly a trace of black upon them.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“When needed.”

“Or when desired.” Michael doesn’t answer this, and Gabriel snorts. “How long does this usually go on?”

With a languid blink, squinting a little against the dust, Michael regards his brother. He straightens again, seeming satisfied, and shrugs up one strong shoulder as he pats his hands clean. “Until I’m satisfied, and my obliteration of my foes is complete.”

Gabriel grins a little. “You’re funny, you know that?”

“I pale in compare to you,” Michael says. There’s an instant where his eyes glitter, an instant wherein Gabriel tries to brace as Michael adds, “We could change that though.”

Snapping his wings, he stirs a burst of sand from the ground beneath their sandals and dust from his wings, encompassing Gabriel in a gritty cloud.

This time, his brother is quick enough to cover himself, a quick crouch under his wings, covered entirely by the dust as it settles. He bides his time, takes slow breaths, listens to Michael laugh, take a step forward, another.

“Do you yield?” Michael asks, bending. “So soon?”

The dust moves as though on its own, and beneath it Gabriel remains crouched, though his wings have splayed, feathers sharp against the ground. And then he does move, striking up a bright sharp wall of sand in a semicircle, enough to push Michael off balance just enough before Gabriel is on him, hands against shoulders, wings against wings, dust swirling around them as Gabriel presses his brother down.

“Enough, brother,” he murmurs, teeth bared in a snarling smile.

Michael’s wings thump wide against the ground and kick up another gout of dust into the air. He closes his eyes to it and laughs, again, only ever a single note of it at a time but the sound is richly warm and carries deep through them both. For one so stoic, so focused on his given tasks when an order has come down from above, moments of joy found without a spray of blood are a rarity in him.

He brings up a leg and heaves his weight to turn Gabriel to his back instead. Their strength is each that of many men, capable of overpowering any mortal or angel outside their sphere. Together, though, they are well-matched - an intentional equivalence at the core of their making. Michael draws up his long legs and sits with his skirt riding high around his thighs, his wings spread enough to shade them both from the sun.

He sets his hands to Gabriel’s breastplate and grins, quick and crooked, sharp gaze narrowed.

“You’ll thank me for this later,” he says.

“Do you think so?” his brother asks him. “Before or after we find ourselves both smited for our disobedience?”

Michael rocks forward, curls his fingers, and Gabriel knows that should he bridge himself he would do little more than arch Michael above him.

And this is not the time.

Not the place.

The tent is too far away.

So Gabriel moves his wings instead, another cloud of sand around and above them, enough to disorient, enough to have Michael close his eyes and Gabriel free his hand. They grasp at each other, familiar with each other’s bodies as they are with their own. Michael turns, enough to avoid a hold, and Gabriel runs his fingers through thick feathers instead, grasping and turning his fist there, instead.

It’s enough to pull a sound from his brother, bent above him now, to ease the pleasant pressure against his wing. His teeth bare behind a smile and Michael, made more fiery still by the promise of his great work before him, ducks low to snare his teeth against Gabriel’s throat. He holds there for a moment, tongue pressed to his pulse, and releases only when Gabriel groans and grips tight enough to pull Michael’s feathers, a few coming loose.

The curse comes in rough Enochian before Michael relents, but does not yet move from astride his brother.

“Must you always be such a first-born? Do you really think our Father would punish us at all, let alone for this?” He cocks his head, nearly coy, and muses, “But it isn’t really that, is it. It’s that you want to be His favorite. You want to ascend back to Him and tell Him how you spoke in His voice to ensure His wishes were carried out on schedule.”

Michael doesn’t fight the bucking of Gabriel’s body beneath his own, but he clasps his legs around Gabriel’s thighs when he turns him, securing his position with sandaled heels digging into his brother’s bare legs.

“‘Michael was misbehaving the whole time, entirely unfocused,” Michael murmurs. “Sycophant.”

“Procrastinating,” Gabriel adds. “Careless. Childish.”

“You are jealous.”

“I am practical, where you are not,” Gabriel retorts, rutting forward, wings up over them and against the ground like a cage around them. “I am thinking of the greater good -”

“We’re destroying a city.”

“You are meant to be,” Gabriel corrects him, one hand down to grasp against Michael’s leg and spread him wider, turning his head away when dark wings flicker and raise sand against him once more. “And yet here you are.”

“Here we are.”

Gabriel presses forward, wings spreading in the sand, breath hot and mingling with his brother’s. He does not close his eyes, but he hoods them, watching Michael through his lashes before, with a hum, he turns his head and lifts his chin.

“I will fall with you, brother, should we fall. Do you so ache to see me punished on your behalf?”

In answer, Michael digs his heels harder into Gabriel’s thighs. He juts his hips upward, pushes their bellies together, and pays no mind to modesty as his skirt rides high with the movement and bares him. Another rough shove finds both their cocks filling in pulses, each one hooding Michael’s eyes and parting his lips.

"Every lash you've ever taken I shared with you," Michael tells him, rocking again. "Every scourging I've received has been striped across your back. Can you imagine what true punishment would feel like? Not only the weight of one, but both?"

"I don't need to imagine," Gabriel growls, grinning. "Nor do I want to relive the experience. You are forcing my hand."

"And other things besides," agrees Michael, his smile feline and self-satisfied.

"Where is your decorum, your sense of respect?"

"For them? It never existed. For you?" Michael reaches up to hold a fistful of Gabriel's hair and pull him close. "You stripped that from me in inches long ago, brother."

“This is why you strike,” Gabriel murmurs, rocking down again, shoulders shifting beneath the heavy leather, the metal of his armor. “And I speak. Brazen.” Another shove forward. “Crude.” His wings shove hard against the sand and billow more out around them. “Uncouth.”

Michael grins and spreads his wings in genuine submission, arching his head back as Gabriel’s fingers find his feathers again, spreading against them and through.

“Human,” he adds. He purrs soft against Michael, biting his lip enough to have Michael’s part before he presses his entire weight down to his brother, held vulnerable and open, hard now beneath him, leather skirts pushed aside in favor of finding their pleasure together.

“You bring out the worst in me,” Michael laughs. Gabriel swallows the sweet sound from him, a mirth created not from violence and destruction but from a kinder delight. Their mouths enmesh with tussling lips, pushing and pulling, biting and sucking. They lick their tongues together and tangle into a mutual moan.

Wild pleasure that works their bodies quickly into rhythm, cocks bumping and rubbing trapped between their bellies. It is Michael who acts, though, to neither’s surprise in shoving his hand down to grasp them both and squeeze together. A hiss from Gabriel is his reward as he ducks his head to watch Michael’s elegant fingers play across the tips, gathering honeyed slick sticky to stroke over them in tandem. Above them Gabriel’s wings are a shield, from sun and dust and prying eyes. Beneath Michael parts from the kiss with a shuddering sound and a quickening heart.

Impetuous and brash. Gabriel knows Michael will finish first. He always does.

“Do we fall, then, little brother? Or do we commit the sin of Onan and spill our seed across the sand?” Gabriel asks, avoiding another kiss in wait for Michael to lay back. He lifts a hand to make it so, held to Michael’s throat, and grasping his jaw turns his head aside to bare his neck. Gabriel makes his mark there. Soft skin drawn between his teeth and cheeks hollowed, he sucks enough that Michael’s voice is nearly lost to him.

“Make me obey,” he manages, as Gabriel’s feathers ruffle in a rough shudder.

“Get up -”

“No,” Michael grins.

“- smite -”

“No!”

“Be the Sword I know you are.”

“Make me," Michael sighs. Gabriel’s growl vibrates through the earth and their bones. It spreads the feathers in Michael’s wings wide in the sand, they shiver and twitch, gouging the earth.

“Stay still,” Gabriel says, pressing teeth against Michael’s skin once more, marking him again, bruising him as no human can. “Spread and obey, and listen to your brother, brother.” A grin, sharp and bright, and warm against Michael’s skin. A moment, then, a shiver from them both, as Gabriel inhales and takes in the spirit and Voice with which he commands.

And then…

“Open to me.” The voice hums in Michael’s head, he does not feel it spoken. “Arch.”

All at once, their heartbeats sync. All at once, every feather lifts and ruffles towards its other matching half on the other angel. Michael’s fingernails curl sharp into his own thighs, and nearly trembling with the force of command, he spreads his legs wide. His teeth hold in a snarled grin; their rhythm now is not the furtive rutting of little birds in sand but the drumbeat of Heaven itself.

As if on a marionette string, Michael’s spine curves from the soil. Their bellies press together, their cocks, their voices and their mouths. Michael tells himself he chooses to relent, that this submission is as much his own doing as that of his brother. He tells himself that and he is met with the echo of his brother’s laughter.

“Further.”

Michael rends red marks into his thighs, reaching down farther still to hold himself spread and shaking. He presses curses to Gabriel’s shoulder, laving leather beneath his tongue, seeking out the join of shoulder and neck against which to heave a sigh. Gabriel’s fingers snare in Michael’s hair, his other hand grasping between them, and with little more than a handful of spit and a savage thrust, he buries himself.

When his breath returns to him again, his body so full there is hardly room for even that, Michael slips his arms around Gabriel’s neck, legs around his hips, and whispers, “I told you that you’d thank me later.”

"Temptation incarnate," Gabriel breathes, turning his face against the squirming thing beneath him. "Petulant and needy thing."

Michael laughs and Gabriel holds him still, taking savage pleasure in the trembling of his brother beneath him. It is always a game, this, between them, Michael’s favourite thing to have Gabriel make him obey.

Since they were smaller. 

And forever after, Gabriel supposes.

His own wings spread farther than Michael’s, caressing the flight feathers beneath his own as they fuck, hard and deliberate thrusts that pull a flush to Michael’s cheeks, deep moans from his chest.

"A lesson in destruction," Gabriel pants against him, smiling wide when Michael turns to him with a needy nuzzle. "For a wayward child of God."

Michael clings tight over his brother’s shoulders, fingernails digging into Gabriel’s arms and lips parted in breathless little sounds against his cheek. Shielded from dust and sun, from the sounds of fire and wailing beyond, they are - it feels - entirely alone in a world of their own making. Conqueror and conquered, both.

“I know nothing that you have not taught me,” Michael sighs, each word broken by a rough thrust, body stretched so brutally it’s a wonder he’s not torn in two. “Will you always come and find me?”

“Yes,” promises Gabriel. He shoves a hand into the sand to brace himself and buries himself to the hilt. Michael’s cry tears high, fraught with pain and pleasure.

“Will you always bring me back?”

“To the light?”

“To you.”

“Yes,” Gabriel laughs. “Always.”

Michael starts to reach between himself but finds his wrist caught. He twists it free and Gabriel catches it again. He turns his fingers to dig himself free and despite the hiss of pain, Gabriel grins. He pins Michael's hand to the earth and traces his brother's lips with his tongue, snaring the lower with his teeth.

He draws a breath, and without words, commands.

_Submit._

A low groan quakes from his little brother, fingers falling slack from their tussle, arms back against the sand. Only his legs remain snared over Gabriel's hips, and even as Gabriel seeks with teeth across Michael's throat, he does little more than bear it, arching.

He is beautiful.

Disobedient and spirited creature as he always was, as he always will be, from the moment they were in their eyrie to every battle since. Gabriel had watched, will watch, Michael return bloody and victorious and angry, energy radiating from him like heat. He had and will watch the guilt cover Michael like a wave, caught between obedient duty and that niggling tug of conscience for a race he has grown to enjoy.

He has and will always be there to snare him back.

A hand between them to soothe Michael’s aching need, dripping between Gabriel’s fingers as he strokes out of time to his thrusting, a jarring shiver of sensation back and forth. Beneath him, Michael lays prone, flushed and dirty and beautiful, taking what he's given, enjoying it. 

"Little brother, you will make a mess." Gabriel laughs softly against him, and it reads at once as a prophecy and a chastisement for the inevitable. 

Michael manages a meager squirm as if to protest, bending his back deep, muscles quivering. He will make a mess because he wants to, because Gabriel wants him to. He spills white bursts ribboning across his belly because Gabriel has commanded him to do so.

"More," Gabriel purrs. He angles his hips and rubs against the swollen nub inside his brother. With a pivot of his wrist he milks Michael to moaning, to thick dollops of seed gathering in the dust. He fists tight around the head of Michael's cock until the last pearlescent bright beads drip free and his little brother begs mercy.

"Will you make a mess of me?" Michael asks, voice rattling into a laugh. Michael worships his big brother with kisses, lips numbed to tingling from panting. Up across his neck, fingers fanning over his cheeks, chasing Gabriel's smile as it curves wide and tickling soft with kisses.

“You are enough of one already,” Gabriel murmurs, but he does not ease his thrusting, does not stop even as Michael trembles and near-mewls beneath him, until his release finds him and he shudders, holding his weight over Michael, pressing their foreheads together and sharing thick hot air between their lips.

They stay still a good while before Gabriel’s wings relax from their held canopy above them and spread lax atop Michael’s again. He pulls free but not away, allowing Michael to wrap his limbs around him and hold him close as they roll to their sides in the sand and settle.

Now, it is Michael who arches a wing above them to keep them shaded from the merciless sun.

“Obedient when you want to be,” Gabriel murmurs, bringing a hand up to stroke over Michael’s face, up into his long hair to work the waves back from his forehead. “Have you considered being so more often?”

Michael nuzzles past Gabriel’s hand, against his cheek, beneath his jaw. Nestled close as they day they were made, but with far more dust between them. He kisses. He kisses again. He savors the vibration of Gabriel’s hum against his lips and returns his slight smile.

“I am nothing but,” Michael protests, squirming just to feel Gabriel hold him tighter. “Tell me what acts I do that aren’t at Father’s behest.”

“Getting fucked into the sand,” Gabriel answers, and Michael draws a hand back as if to punch him in the gut, grinning as his hand is quickly snared.

“At His behest or yours,” he clarifies. “There’s little enough that I do in self-direction. Less still in disobedience. Dustbaths and dallying. What a sinner I am.”

“An entirely unrepentant one,” Gabriel confirms, stroking his thumb against the corner of Michael’s eye, over and over, watching his brother watch him with sleepy adoration. Then he kisses him once more and shifts away despite Michael’s whined protest. A black wing falls heavy across Gabriel’s lap as he sits up and the elder looks towards his brother with a raised eyebrow.

“Preen me.”

“You hardly deserve it.”

Michael pouts, but the smile behind it ruins the effect. As does the dust in his wavy hair, over his face and clothes. He is a beautiful thing, a powerful thing. He is a thing Gabriel will never stop loving and protecting.

To his detriment, he supposes.

He shoves against Michael’s wing and stands, dusting his legs off, settling his uniform again. He raises an eyebrow at the dusty angel beneath his feet who still reaches childishly for him with the long flight feathers of his extended wing.

“Quite the plague of blood you are,” Gabriel mumbles.

Michael hides a grin against his arm, stretching lazily, as Gabriel slaps away the long feathers straining for him. With a wince and a groan, Michael pushes himself up to stand, sand spilling from the crevices of his armor and the long tunic beneath. He shakes his head and frees it of dust, shoving his hair back from his face with both hands.

It’s only then that he notices the damp spots drying against his skirt, and brushes a hand over them. It does nothing, and he frowns.

“Don’t tell me you need a bath now, too,” Gabriel remarks. “Tidying yourself up before your butchery.”

“I suppose the blood will hide it well enough.”

“Charming.”

Michael lifts his eyes. His body tenses, shoulders to curled toes, and Gabriel has only long enough for his eyes to widen in response before Michael lunges, snaring him by the back of the neck and bringing their mouths roughly together. The kiss is smothering, crushing out their breath between them until they finally untangle, nearly staggering, and gasp. Foreheads pressed together, Michael holds his brother there a moment more.

“Bathing after,” he insists.

“When you’re done,” laughs Gabriel.

“And preening.”

“When you’re done,” Gabriel repeats, affecting a frown. He brings his thumb to his lips a moment and licks it before rubbing a particularly stubborn mark from Michael’s forehead. “Now go. You have Father’s word behind you.”

“And yours?”

“Always.”

Another grin, another tilt of his head and Michael’s expression changes with a blink to one of the stoic terrifying warrior that descends from the sky to rain holy wrath. He steps back, and with a swoop of his wings enough to upset the dust once more, he takes off, a quick ascent to the greying late afternoon.

Gabriel watches him as far as the smoldering city. He doesn’t need to watch further, the screams are enough.

He wonders how such a thing as Michael is so changeable, so beautiful and gentle and silly, and at once so ruthless and cold.

He supposes it is all a matter of perspective, of whether you are on the ground being smote or in the sky watching the smiting.

Gabriel turns, instead, to the upset dust and sand where Michael rolled and fluffed himself. He is a strange creature but far from unwise, and Gabriel’s own, on top of that. Perhaps there was no harm in it. Surely none at all when there was no one to see.

It takes a step, and another, to find the softened sand. And with a sigh and his back to the punished city, Gabriel dives against the dust.


End file.
